Tuesday, September 30, 2008

One of the greatest ways to build your personal profile is to run seminars. In house seminars if you work for an organisation or public seminars - if you run your own business.

Internal

For the employee, it’s the key to career advancement and becoming the subject matter expert in your business. For example……Imagine you are the IT expert in the business. You run a monthly GET THE MOST OUT OF YOUR COMPUTER workshop FOC for any staff. You can be certain that one month, a member of the Senior Leadership Team will attend your Techniques for Emptying Your Inbox session. I am certain that down the track, if you then applied to be the IT guru transferred to Dubai (if that’s what you want to do?) you would get some preferential treatment.

External

For the business owner it’s the same gig. You may be one of 25 real estate agents in downtown Manly. If you’re the one running the free quarterly property update on Residex prices, what is selling and why - people will come to know you. The quality of prospect you create is amazing and the standing you get in the community is huge.

Here are some tips for making this work:

1: Don’t be too smart for your own good.

Choose topics that make sense. E.g. How to reduce your inbox to zero / How to speak in public / How to sell your house for the most money in a tough market.

Don’t be too creative

2: Grow your network.

You need a list of people to invite. For the internal employee this is often easy. The 500 staff working in the Melbourne office are a perfect list. Simply go through HR or L&D to gain permissions and the correct approach.

For externals it’s a bit harder. One way is to create a 7-page word document that you can send as a fact sheet/special report or e book. You might then place an add in the local paper, but primarily promote the special report as the reason for contacting you. Then, from the list of people who request the special report - you have your invite list for the event.

If no one requests the free report then at least you know your topic is a fizzer and you have saved yourself the embarrassment of running an event no one turns up to.